


when it disjoins

by dissembler



Category: Another Country (1984)
Genre: Discussions on Abuses of Power, Hand Jobs, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Period-Typical Homophobia (Internalised), Power Imbalance, Public Schools, Sex Crying, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-15
Updated: 2020-02-15
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:07:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22743004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dissembler/pseuds/dissembler
Summary: After lights-out, Menzies finds Judd in the library.
Relationships: Tommy Judd/Jim Menzies
Comments: 3
Kudos: 12





	when it disjoins

It is past lights out and they're all lucky that it's him on duty rather than Fowler; Fowler who has pity for neither man nor beast even when a sudden summer storm frets around them, threatening at the shutters and howling its displeasure through the eaves. Menzies has already seen Spungin out of bed and told him to keep to the corridors where he is unlikely to disturb the Masters and to pace himself out until he’s tired enough to go back to bed.

Also awake, Judd is pacing in the fourth year library; even he, it seems, is not immune to the spectacle of the weather. He pauses – slippers and narrow ankles, standard blue sleep trousers, dressing gown belted around his narrow waist, hair even more a mess than usual as though his hands have been dragged through it – facing the window, and casts his long shadow over the table and bookshelves. Meanwhile Lenin sits in the muted glow of a lamp covered with newspaper and _Das Kapital_ lies open, close to the end.

Menzies pushes the door to quietly and smiles. “Makes one awfully glad to be indoors, doesn’t it?” he says and Judd startles and swears, turns to him with his hands up, face a little fearful.

“Christ," he says, no longer afraid. "It’s you. Made to be a prefect, Menzies. Silent as a bloody cat.”

Mildly, Menzies says, “You’re not under arrest, Judd. Put your hands down.” _At ease_ , is what he’d have said if he were Fowler, though Fowler never likes to have anyone at ease. It’s one of the many things he’s never understood about the man, to Menzies the advantages have always seemed obvious. 

Judd obeys, though that's probably not how he thinks of it, and sticks his hands into his pockets. His glasses are glinting in the lamp-light and he looks tired. When he meets Menzies’ eyes his gaze still holds the defiance that has become his custom, but it shares its space with something else. Something harder. “Shouldn’t you be skulking around looking for boys out of bounds?” he asks and Menzies rejoins too quickly, and with warmth he's not sure he's still allowed: “You say that as though I’ve not found one.” They’d coexisted on mutual amusement before, he thinks, with Judd smiling at his balance and Menzies smiling at Judd’s spirit, his little rebellions, but Judd's face now suggests that their entente is dead and buried. He sighs. “Nobody’s silly enough to go outside in this," he says, he hopes, reasonably. "And if they can’t sleep better they take their wakefulness to the corridors than wake the whole house.”

Judd laughs at that without warmth. “How benevolent of you,” he bites, and Menzies allows himself to confront the fact that this does leave him a little bereft, the loss of cordiality.

“Look." He says it sharper than he means to and forces his feathers smooth again to continue, “I’ve not changed, Judd.”

It earns him the ironic arch of an eyebrow. “Oh, I believe that," Judd tells him. "It’s rather that the scales now seem to have fallen from our eyes. You’re a born politician too, Menzies. You had all of us fooled. ‘Fowler’s the monster, he'll lash out at anything,' we'd all thought, 'then Delahay’s the sportsman so he’ll take a dim view of flippancy on the fields, and Barclay’s the patrician, fair, but Menzies is benign. Menzies will help.’”

“I did help. I saved the house from Fowler.” He can see himself repeating it until his dying day. 'Menzies is the one who managed to steer them through.' Annoyed, he says the wrong thing again, he says, “And in doing so your conscience was assuaged.”

“Oh," Judd retorts. "Well, I’m glad my conscience was so high on your priorities.” He bites out the word ‘conscience’, as if it’s a favoured dog who’s bitten him.

Menzies, as much as he can in another man's island in his pyjamas, holds his head high. “I’ll not apologise.”

But Judd is on the verbal warpath now and pays that no heed. “I suppose the biggest question is how you got – presuming you have done – Farcical to bow down to you. What dark arts did you practice there?” Judd thinks things should be pure, that the ideological argument is enough, but Marx amounts to ethical philosophy not realpolitik. He hopes Judd will be strong enough to reckon with this when the time comes. 

He's happy to answer that one. “Hardly nefarious. I merely told the House Master in no uncertain terms that if Fowler were to stay on as head of house, there would be no house.”

Judd looks at him again now, assessing. “And all’s well that ends well, I suppose. Though you’ve ruined a friend to do it.”

He makes another mistake, he rolls his eyes and sees Judd's narrow. Without, the storm rails on.

“Really it was the blackmail that did it.”

“You came to me after the blackmail.”

“My last hope?”

“That was Devenish.”

“And don’t you find that in the slightest bit flattering?”

Judd looks more than a little incredulous. “No, actually, I don’t. That you would think I’d give in–” 

Half-heartedly he decides he should at least try to stop this rant, lest the both of them are discovered, and so he says, “Besides, I’ve not ruined him. Bennett will go on to Cambridge – yes that’s his intention, hasn’t he told you? He likes the sound of the Apostles – and from there he will enter your dreaded establishment no worse off for having not been a God.”

“That isn’t how he sees it.” Judd pulls his hands free of his pockets to gesture. “But _Christ_ just how long a game do you bloody people play? There’s suffering now! There is poverty and destitution now! Not that you see it from your nice cosy homes and your honey-toned prep schools like this place. Even Parliament! These places coddle and hide the very people who could now or eventually help from realities they could fix. And so those people, once in power, are too busy thinking about their career plans and the retirement they dreamt up at their prep and public schools to do anything useful at all. You want to be in Parliament, don’t you, Menzies? To help people or because that’s what your sort does?”

He is beautiful like this, Judd, and Menzies lets himself think it because there’s no harm in the thought. There's no harm in watching the fire in his eyes and the heave of his shoulders as he burns. Bennett’s Harcourt was some far off woodland creature, beautiful and serene while Judd is how Menzies imagines a wildfire to be, crackling and dangerous and impossible to look away from. 

Menzies give Judd time get his breath back. He turns his face away as Judd drags a hand through his hair and over his face. He has always blushed easily, he shares the trait with his sisters, to his father’s ire. When he turns back, Judd's shoulders have fallen and he looks hollow now, used up and exhausted. Menzies casts around for something to animate him again and lights upon the table.

“D’you know I’ve read _Das Kapital?_ ” he says, stepping towards it.

Judd folds his arms. “Have you hell,” he says, but he’s interested. He meets Menzies’ eyes.

“I have. Summer just gone.”

“Know thy enemy?”

Menzies laughs. “There’s wisdom in at least knowing the other chap’s beliefs.”

“Be still my beating heart,” Judd says, dripping sarcasm, and then several things happen very quickly. Menzies reaches for the statue, Judd says “No, don’t” and then there’s a hand wrapped around his wrist and he’s been brought back, pressed until his spine is against a dividing column in the bookshelves. Judd’s hand is warm and dry, his palm and fingers soft from the refusal to take up a cricket bat, and his grip is tight. Menzies’ wrist is, like the rest of him, and again to his father’s ire, rather delicate, but it’s more than the grind of fragile bones that makes him flinch. There’s no noise but their breathing now, the storm gone as fast as it came.

“Christ,” Judd says again, and Menzies thinks someone ought to teach him more blasphemy for variety, he thinks this because it’s better than listening, because he knows that Judd has him now by the weak point in the armour of his decade and a half on this Earth. “Nobody ever touches you, do they? They think you’re above it all.”

He feels his face heat and prays that the shadow Judd is casting over him, the eclipse of light, means he won’t see it. “Please,” he says. “I don’t, I’m not–”

Judd tilts his head, a sudden light darts off from the frame of his glasses. “Odd time,” Judd says, voice low, “to draw an ethical line.”

He closes his eyes. He’s had this particular ethical line for a long time, but Judd can’t be expected to know that. It’s not the sort of thing one broadcasts, that ‘Of course I’d _like_ to be touched by another boy occasionally, but I find it deplorable to impose on juniors like that and, oh dear, I seem to be a prefect now and it turns my stomach to think of using power like that.’ No matter how much he needs and no matter how often he looks at, well, at Judd, it’s been Judd for two years now, and feels gutted by the want of him. He opens his eyes.

“Let me go,” he says, “we can forget this. I’ll leave you alone.”

But there’s realisation dawning in Judd’s eyes, and trust a man consumed by philosophy and ethics to be so sensitive to the internal high-wire acts of others, and Judd leans closer, kisses his throat above the line of shirt and jumper, a place no lips have ever before come to rest. Even when he was a junior himself he was barely touched; hardly ever in punishment and never in need. He was a sickly child, he wasn’t sought after. Judd was. 

Menzies tries to pull away, he has always tended to cold, he feels on fire now. 

Judd pulls a fraction back and laughs into the space between them. “How noble you are, Menzies. You could order me to stop, you’re a prefect and it’s a power this place affords you but you aren’t. You’re telling yourself to stop.” He lets go of Menzies’ wrist but it doesn't free him, instead his hand creeps up under Menzies’ shirt to press in the expanse between his belly and his hip. Menzies is small, narrow, and Judd’s hand is broad, long-fingered. It holds him where he is. 

“Please,” he says again, but now even he can’t pin down what he’s asking for, torn apart by the war between two imperatives. “Please, Judd.” 

Judd mocks, “Please, Judd, what? Stop exposing you to the hypocrisies of this prison? To the dangers of having power over people that you simply shouldn’t have?”

Menzies tries to say, “I’m perfectly aware of the dangers,” but the hand Judd has on his belly is shifting, long fingers splaying out to brush against the waistband of his pyjama trousers (they’re too big for him, anyway, his father has always liked to think that he’s bigger than he is with all the games putting muscle on him. He’s a fairly strong upper arm, though; he plays the violin.) and the words die on his tongue. 

“Or perhaps: ‘Please Judd, stop giving me what I want.’ Do you think the sin’s lessened when it’s by omission?”

He shakes his head, no. If nothing else, if he can’t make his treacherous mouth form an actual denial, if he can’t stop his body from responding to this, at least he has to make Judd see that he knows this is wrong.

Judd’s face softens slightly, perhaps despite himself. This close, he is a masterpiece of light and shadow, made otherworldly by the glint of his glasses even as they slide perilously close to the tip of his nose. Menzies, quite apart from himself, slowly and carefully, brings his hands up to them, unhooks and slides them off and turns his face away to tuck them safely away on a bookshelf. When he turns back it is to see Judd’s eyes narrowed and he realises that one of his hands is still at Judd’s forehead, his fingers dipping into wild hair that’s not been tamed since they were juniors: another liberty he mustn’t take. 

Judd’s smile is jagged and pleased with himself when Menzies moves the hand away, flinching at the softness as if it were briars. 

“I’m sorry,” Menzies says and Judd laughs.

“Are you? Does it do you much good?”

Menzies sees clearly for a second and tries “Judd, I —“ but oh, _God_ , Judd’s hand moves down into his trousers. He turns his head away, can’t bear to look at all his careful distance being shot to pieces. But Judd wants him to see, ever the teacher, proselytising, and Judd takes Menzies’ neck with his other hand, grips the hair at the base of his skull to turn his head back and down. 

His gaze drops with Judd’s to the crux of the matter and when Judd wraps his hand around him he jerks helplessly, knocks his head against the wood of a shelf. It isn’t hard enough to do any damage, but is enough to make his eyes water with the sting, and in answer to the sound Judd looks up, cuts off what might have been an apology, and leverages his grip in Menzies’ hair to pull his head down to Judd’s shoulder. It’s a small thing but Judd has given himself away with the gesture and Menzies cannot help but see that, mark it down: at the end of the day Judd would rather Menzies be safe than seeing, even if seeing were the more potent of punishments. Judd has a bleeding heart, one day it will empty him. Menzies takes the opportunity presented, he presses his face to where soft dressing gown meets softer skin. He breathes Judd in, soap and cleanliness: purity. 

Unaware of his giving himself away, Judd frigs him mercilessly, palm dry and the friction unbearable but _God_ Menzies thinks he might die if it stops. He buries his desperate noises in Judd’s neck, open-mouthed and gasping. 

If Judd means to torture him it’s working; if Judd means to shake him it’s working. Years of hidden, sublimated need are broken open. The unspeakable all but spoken. The whole sorry business clawing at him as Judd’s brisk grip brings him close, holds him at the cliff’s edge of something he can never take back, never justify. It doesn’t matter that he doesn’t feel using so much as used, in this the fact is what speaks: it’s Judd’s hand on him, Judd bringing him off. An abuse of power. He gives in and reaches for Judd, clutches at him, ends up with hands fisted in fabric and holds on for dear life. 

Judd slides the hand at his skull down to the top of his spine just as his other hand twists, and Menzies’ crisis hits like the final hit of the birch. He comes sobbing his relief into the damp of Judd’s neck. He tastes salt; he is crying. Judd kisses his hairline, an awful benediction, Christ kisses Judas in this version. With perfect cruelty Judd does not push him away, merely wipes his hand against his own trousers and gives Menzies time to drag his pieces back together, still clutching him. For a moment they are still, and Menzies’ shame burns in him like a fire before he has enough of himself back to smother it. 

He leans back against the shelves, lets go of Judd’s dressing gown. He had felt Judd’s own arousal against his hip but, freed, Judd steps back to the table, starts running his finger down the page of that bloody book. 

Menzies steps forward and Judd fixes him with a look. 

“Again, Menzies, this is an odd time for fair play.”

“I’d be happy to.”

“I know, that's why I shan’t let you.” Judd’s aim again is impeccable, the words slip in to devastate before he’s fully sewn up. This time Menzies gets to the door, has it halfway opened, before Judd gives himself away. “Menzies, I haven’t… Like Martineau. You won’t…” and the uncertainty in his voice does more than anything else had to make Menzies feel vile. His self-pity is not what Judd needs.

Menzies turns back, smiles ruefully. “No,” he says. “No, I don’t think so. You know, you really ought to get some sleep, now that the storm’s died down.”

“I really ought to work.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Julius Caesar, Act II Sc. I: Th' abuse of greatness is when it disjoins/Remorse from power.
> 
> This is movie canon rather than play canon, as in the play they make it explicit that Menzies is one of Bennett's conquests. 
> 
> Please join me in the Menzies fan club, he is the worst but I love him.


End file.
